


Beyond an Endless Winter

by HikariOni



Category: Frozen (2013)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 13:31:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17868161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HikariOni/pseuds/HikariOni
Summary: this is fanfiction of old fanfiction. Hikari was Captain of the Arendelle royal guard, before she sent all of her closest friends to die in the name of Elsa, her lover. the Queen subsequently froze herself with grief upon discovering the truth, and Hikari committed suicide on top of the North mountain, unable to deal with the loss.this is a story set after their respective deaths. you can find the previous storie at r/thecoldwar on reddit.





	Beyond an Endless Winter

Her own sword dodged Hikari's ribs and split her heart.

She opened her eyes to whiteness, pain washing over her in waves slowly fading. She blinked three times to reveal a seemingly infinite expanse of snowy plain.

She'd always imagined Hell as pits of roaring flames, fire licking at her skin until there was nothing left so she could be rebuilt to suffer again. Wails of anguish, crushing loneliness as she was left to agonize for eternity.

Yet, pain slowly faded from her chest until it was reduced to tendrils of discomfort in her arms. There, six bugs crawled under her flesh. Slowly, up and down, left and right, lazily rocking, pulling on her bones. She reached to find skin intact where her senses expected a lump, softly shifting.

Hikari heard the snow crunching behind her. She turned around to find Elsa.

The queen looked at her. She stood, moving replica of the frozen statue Hikari had just left. She reached out. Elsa scowled.

Hikari's gaze slid down to Elsa's hand, clutching a sharp icicle. She watched the blood from her palm slowly drip down it. She looked back up, to Elsa's face.

She opened her arms wide, an invitation.

"Do it."

Elsa took a step forward, hands shaking. She lifted her weapon high over her head as Hikari stared her down. She grasped it with two hands, cutting deeper into her wound, feeling the ice seep in and fill it. She felt the weight of it like iron manacles. Like the chains tying her to the universe, unwilling to let her consciousness fade and erase her suffering.

Elsa dropped the icicle, and it dispersed into nothingness as she collapsed at Hikari's feet.

Hikari reached out, only to have her hand captured in a cage of ice, scraping against the skin of her knuckles. She grimaced.

"Don't touch me," Elsa said.

It was halfway between an order and a plea. Hikari reached out once again, this time in spirit, as she tried to tap into a well of magic she once shared. She was denied, shards of ice digging into her ribs.

"No. This is mine. You can't take it away, not like everything else."

Hikari tried a sigh – it was more a roar. Something that scraped her throat and set her chest aflame.

"I told you. I did this for you!"

Elsa's face snapped back up, tearful eyes brimming with despairing rage.

"Then you've never understood anything. I never wanted this."The bugs under Hikari's skin squirmed and pulled on her bones as if trying to rip her apart.

"Of course you didn't want this. That's why I needed to do it. To keep you safe!"

"Safe from what?! The last shreds of happiness I could possibly experience?!"

Hikari pursed her lips and swallowed the rage that nestled on her tongue. Elsa gathered her limbs under herself and pulled herself up. She stared at Hikari, standing stalwart with icy death hovering around her rib cage, scraping at her flesh.

Elsa's gaze slid on her, up and down. She felt disgust, anger, pain, fear. It was like a knife in her chest, the blade twisting and turning the longer she looked at her. How could she have possibly loved this woman?

What had happened to the woman she had loved?

Elsa took a step back. Hikari watched her as she turned her back to her and started walking away. She tried to move, but the icy prison Elsa had created stopped her.

There was no Hell more painful than this.

Elsa left fourteen pairs of footsteps in the snow, and then she stopped. She felt a chain inside her core, something cold and numb, that scraped at her spine as it wrapped back around. And when she tried to take another step, she couldn't. The chain tugged at her, pulled her back, held her in place.

She turned around to watch Hikari, reaching at her chest, staring at her. She imagined the chain, pulling on her sternum and grinding against bone.

Elsa stood there, a million footsteps away from liberation.

"What have you done?"

"This isn't my fault."

The queen scoffed; it was a painful thing that rattled the chain inside her.

"You expect me to believe you?"

Hikari paused. She curled her fingers on her chest, like a bug crawled under her flesh there. Like she was trying to dig it out.

"No. But I didn't do this."

Seven chains. Seven lives, tied to her. Seven fates she had cut short. Seven people, hovering around her soul for eternity.

"This is my curse," Hikari realized.

"No. It's ours."

All of Elsa's sins ripped apart her insides, and left nothingness in her chest where the chain clattered against her frozen heart. She looked at her palms, at the blood staining the creases of her skin, seeping deeper into her flesh. The blood of a thousand: famished, beaten, impaled, butchered, shot, burned, frozen; with veins bursting from icy crimson.

Elsa cried silently; small shards of ice fell to the ground without a sound.

In an instant, she remembered skewering a woman, pulverizing her chest, keeping her head above ground with an ice spike through her dislocated jaw. She watched as the corpses of bandits surrounded her, pools of blood making dry ground mud; she watched when came to her the people she'd learned to call, if not friends, _allies_. There was the boy with the limp, and the man he admired. He pulled out a gun, and Hikari beheaded him – more came, and she murdered them, too. The boy ran: she let him. Elsa lay on the ground, and Hikari smeared blood on her when she picked her up and carried her away.

Then, Elsa blinked twice to reveal vast expanses of seemingly infinite snow. The chain buzzed with the feeling of fatality. Hikari stared at Elsa, eyes wide, mouth hung half-open on whatever she had intended to say.

"What was that?" Hikari asked.

"The sins I have committed in another life."

Elsa understood. It shredded her lungs with guilty shards – the knowledge that she could not repent.

"And this is purgatory."

 

They walked.

Not that they expected to find anything, or get anywhere. But it was better than just standing there, and as long as the snow crunched under their steps they didn't have to hear each other breathe.

They left footsteps in the snow but every time Elsa blinked, they were gone. As if with every beat of her heart everything but Hikari – but her curse – disappeared.

There was nothing. Vast expanses of nothing, stretching into infinity. And, as if mimicking her environment, Elsa's despair had faded into void, leaving the chain rattling in her chest with each step. She hoped that pain would come back, else she feared the noise would drive her insane.

Then, there was something. A speck of blackness at the limits of their peripherals, slowly growing. Elsa stopped; Hikari did, fourteen steps ahead, when the chain wrapped around her ribs and tugged at her spine.

One speck became two, and Elsa thought she recognized them. Her ribs peeled away inside out to reveal a bleeding heart – her wish was granted.

Hikari stepped back towards Elsa when dark figures approached. She stopped when she recognized the masks.

Rech did not talk: he leaped at her, sword out, to cleave the true traitor in half. Hikari side-stepped it and he struck again, snow flying up in a puff. She couldn't see emotion behind the mask, but she felt cold fury like a chill on the surface of her skin. One bug, one chain, pulled harder until she thought it would tear her flesh apart.

Instead, she watched Rech's sword's wide arc and pounced at his side, where he kept a dagger. She grabbed the hilt, using her weight and his momentum to push him aside. Blade out, she kicked his chest as he was regaining his balance and leaped again to push the point in his neck.

There was no blood, no gurgles. Rech and his featureless mask faded away, leaving behind nothing.

Corteno deflected the dagger thrown at him with a flick of his wrist. Elsa didn't move, the chain at her core taut and sticky with blood. It trickled down to her palms, reminding her that her hands would never be clean.

"Move away, Corteno," Hikari ordered.

"No."

"Move. Away."

Elsa watched the muscles of his neck tighten as he clenched his jaw. Hikari took a step forward.

How many times would Hikari murder all those she held dear? How many times was she willing to watch them die?

"Hikari, don't."

"Elsa..."

"Don't do this."

Corteno remained silent, hand on the hilt of his sword. Elsa thought she saw him glimpse at her. She felt him tense besides her, like a beast ready to pounce. Hikari's only weapon still lay at his feet.

She took a step forward.

"Hikari..."

The same glanced at her, her attention fixed on Corteno.

"You won't get Elsa this time," Corteno said. "She'll come with me."

Elsa swallowed.

Hikari grabbed at her chest as if pulling on the cursed chain that connected them. Elsa felt it sway.

"She tried to leave. She can't."

Corteno threw his hand up in disbelief. He had a chuckle, something that pulled the corners of his mouth and grated at the back of Elsa's skull.

"Oh, and why is that? The power of true love? You two are connected by fate?"

Hikari did not scowl nor frown; she did not tighten her lips, nor clench her teeth. She wore a face as featureless as the mask of the one she had just slain.

"Just go, Corteno."

"I won't. Not this time."

Hikari took another step forward, just short of the ice spike that shot up at her feet. She turned to look at Elsa, who felt the burning gaze of Corteno at the back of her neck. She turned to face him and explain.

"It's a curse. We're bound together. She can't leave, and neither can I."

The chain felt numb, unmoving.

Corteno's mask stared at Elsa. Shoulders squared, he let his hand fall off of the handle of his weapon.

"I see. Then, I guess..."

He pulled his blade out and leaped.

"I'll just have to kill her!"

Hikari dodged out of the way of the attack before Elsa could reach out and stop it.

"NO!" she screamed.

And Corteno paused. His sword arm fell limp at his side, still clutching the weapon. Before he even turned around, Elsa saw rage explode in his shoulders.

"WHY?!" he roared.

He ripped off the mask, revealing a face contorted by anger which she couldn't recognize. His features peeled away to reveal a demon; sharp teeth and bloodshot eyes, with his humanity broken at his feet.

"WHY DO YOU PICK HER?! WHY DO YOU PROTECT HER?!"

He took a step towards Elsa. She took a step back.

"I've always been there. The shoulder to cry on, ready to come at your call without hesitation! I would have laid my life bare in front of your feet! So WHY?!"

Elsa froze and watched as she rejected him a hundred times. A thousand times. And she would love him, every time, but never enough. She watched as he offered her his still beating heart, and she refused it; she watched as he died, for her, before he even had the chance to tell her that he loved her. She watched, a thousand times, as she loved Hikari, as she was swept in her embrace, warm and safe, while he stood there with his heart bleeding. She watched him die, again, and again, and again, alone – in the way one truly is, when their chest strums for someone who has never loved them enough.

White snow revealed him again, blade bare as he screamed for her.

"If I don't get to have you this time, NO ONE WILL!"

And then he died. Elsa saw the tip of an icy spike through his throat before he faded, and the weapon melted in Hikari's hand.

She realized that, of the chains crawling under her skin, only four remained.

Elsa looked up, to avoid Hikari's gaze but stare at her face. She watched the blood splattered on it disappear like a dream. Corpses that should have existed left no imprint in the snow.

"It didn't matter," Elsa said after a pause.

Hikari stared.

"We're already dead. Just as we have been, hundreds of thousands of times."

The chain rattled.

"He could have driven his blade through my throat, I would be standing here just the same."

"You might have faded like they did."

She might. So Elsa bent down, to retrieve the knife still at her feet. She tossed it to the other side of the chain.

"Then that is my wish. Kill me."

Hikari caught the blade by its handle.

"No."

And betrayed her love one last time. Elsa had not thought pain could reach her again, yet the refusal dug at her chain, sunk it further into her chest. She rattled it, in the hopes that agony would erase her consciousness.

It drug along her entrails, yet here she stood still.

"If I must plead on my hands and knees, Hikari, I will."

So her head fell as she did, to her knees, and she bent awaiting the blade like a guillotine.

"One last life should not pain you. I beg you, if there is still one last ounce of good in your bones – end my suffering."

She waited.

Then, there was the noise of a knife piercing flesh, yet no pain. Elsa dared look up, broken hope like a swirling storm in her chest.

Hikari gurgled on blood with a blade in her throat. She twisted it in a sickening sound, gargled unintelligible words, and pulled it out. Blood poured out from the wound in a cascade, staining the snow at her feet.

Elsa blinked, and suddenly found whiteness where she had just seen crimson.

She rose to her feet, unsteady.

"I wouldn't think it so easy to escape purgatory," Hikari croaked.

Elsa closed her eyes.

She listened to the sound of gore again, the breaking of bones, the crushing of viscera. She listened for the blood splattering on snow – she never tried to make sense of the gurgled words Hikari attempted.

A minute, or an hour, passed. Elsa retracted her ice and opened her eyes, to find her curse standing steadfast with pain like a dream. Quiet. A blink and Elsa missed Hikari's wounds closing.

Perhaps she expected her to speak of what had just transpired. For her to harbour resentment, surprise at the ice which a moment earlier crushed her insides. But Hikari kept quiet. Her head down, as if awaiting the guillotine's blade.

Knowing that she deserved it. Elsa felt, somehow, that Hikari didn't deserve remorse.

The chain between them rattled in the empty air, not close enough to the queen's chest. Rustled by a wind that wasn't there.

"Oh," a voice echoed. "Hey, kiddos."

Both turned to look at Canada, who waved. They didn't wave back.

"You look like you're in a bad mood."

They stared.

"You get it, right? You know what's going on. Purgatory, and all. Rech and Corteno are gone, yeah?"

Hikari nodded.

"Of course, of course. I think I'll be gone too, soon."

And Hikari saw him die, hundreds of thousands of time. Charred or impaled, shot, stabbed, his bones crushed, his lungs filled with blood – he drowned, he fell, he gurgled around an arrow. He screamed _DO IT_ , a flash of light and searing heat.

And she remembered, for a moment, an old woman dying at her feet. _Everyone around you dies. Every time. Woe to those you love._

The chains crawled under her skin, scraped at her bones and left behind cold ridges that tingled unpleasantly.

"Why did they fade, and why can't we?" Hikari croaked.

Canada pointed at her; "Well, you're the cursed," and then, at Elsa; "and she's the victim. _We_ aren't part of this. We're collateral."

He gestured in a circle: "We gravitate towards you and we'll meet often, but at the end of the day we aren't bonded the way you two are. That's why we aren't always there."

He didn't even pause to breathe – he probably didn't need to.

"I think the universe's dead, and that's why we've stopped coming back. But, don't take my word for it – I've been doing a lot of thinking since I came here, is all."

"So, what do we have left?" Elsa asked.

"You two? Eternity, I'd wager."

The word had Elsa's chest rend, agony that almost sent her reeling – her legs shook and she collapsed, again, wishing for the blade to fall and end her.

She had not found redemption. She would never attain it, but the burning of Hell would always be better than this. How many sins did she now carry? The infinity of lives she had cut short expanded in front of her like a wave, a bottomless sea.

If she had lived hundreds of thousands of lives, the tendrils of her destruction reached out far beyond anything she could comprehend.

Her gaze snapped up to Hikari, stalwart as always with her shoulders squared against everlasting sin.

"Why?" Elsa sobbed, "I know I must suffer for the sins I have committed, but should death not be redemption? Should Hell not be redemption? Let me burn in the pits of flames, _alone_. Alone, without my curse chained to my chest – forlorn so that I may reflect on my crimes!"

The captain stared at her pathetic form, shivering and crying with frozen tears ringing against the icy ground. One for every life she had ever destroyed. Endless tears for endless Men. Perhaps Elsa should have cried blood.

One beat of her heart, and Canada disappeared from her peripherals.

The absence suddenly opened a rift in Elsa's chest, and opened her eyes to a realization she should have had long, long ago. Suddenly, she remembered a moment where he had put tools to a collar where rested the fate of the universe.

A moment where he had been the only one to know the true extent of Elsa's cowardice.

A moment, broken like a stone crushed under Hikari's boot.

The realization robbed all the despair from the queen's lungs. Fatality settled under her ribs, the thought that, perhaps – oh, surely – all of the universe's suffering could have been spared.

Her voice didn't shake. It couldn't, anymore.

"... It wasn't a fake, was it."

Hikari feigned ignorance with a level but sharp tone.

"What?"

" _The philosopher's stone_ , Hikari. The thing that could have erased human suffering for eternity. The thing you crushed beneath your boot."

Hikari was dead, her love in shambles, her queen filled with loathing for her. One would have thought that she had nothing to lose.

"It was a fake."

Yet, she committed to the lie which Elsa guessed. There was no part of her that could conceive of Hikari as honest. And, she realized, no universe in which Hikari would not have made that decision.

"Don't lie to me."

The captain remained silent. Bearing her sins with squared shoulders still, as if refusing their weight. As if she were justified.

Elsa rose to her feet, not out of acceptance, nor through resolve. Instead, as if she was moved by an outside force; a puppet of ice and cold, quiet as her limbs swayed. She stepped forward, and the chain lowered with the slack.

"Hikari. You could have ended human suffering. You knew it was what _I_ wanted. So why?"

Elsa didn't know why she still expected answers. She reached so foolishly for regrets she knew Hikari didn't bear.

"It was a fake," Hikari repeated like evangelion.

"I wanted to end human suffering, Hikari. I simply wasn't strong enough to. I needed you to lend me your strength. I needed you to do it for me."

And Elsa, yet standing, slowly crumbled.

"You loved me, didn't you? You loved me, and I needed you, and you refused. You should have given me your courage! You should have given me your strength! You loved me, didn't you?!"

Through the panic, through the ever rising realization of what she had let transpire, Elsa watched Hikari take the words like a blow. She was disconnected from the pain.

"If you loved me, you knew what I wanted! You knew who I was! You knew who I should be! Hikari, we could have erased human suffering! _I_ could have erased human suffering! You knew, Hikari, you knew that it was what I wanted! I wanted so badly for no one to suffer anymore!"

She stepped forward still, her knees bending further every time, collapsing with every step.

"How could you do this?! How could you rip that out from under me?! I needed your strength, I needed what you so willingly gave me so many times! Hikari, you could have erased all of humanity's suffering, you could have erased my suffering, you could have let me be what I wanted to be!"

Soon she crawled, groveling at Hikari's feet, sobs wracking her being and tears freezing her cheeks. And with her head against the ground, Elsa couldn't notice her captain's shoulders fall, her tower crumble.

"Why?! Why did you doom the world?! Why did you doom me?!"

"It was a fake," Hikari's voice cracked as if there were a blade in her throat. "Because there is no world in which I exist where your absence does not bring suffering."

There, Elsa climbed Hikari's figure. She clutched at her clothes to raise herself, her hands running along her legs, her chest, then her shoulders. And when they stood equal, the queen grabbed her captain's face between her hands without gentleness. The frost hollowed out Hikari's cheeks.

"Hunger, disease, age, all gone, Hikari. That is where human suffering lies. You could have agonized, once, a single lifetime, for the prosperity of humanity. It is what I wanted. You loved me, right? Then why, _why_ , would you betray me?"

Hikari's tears painted her cheeks. There was no reflection in her eyes.

"I needed your strength, Hikari. The one you so willingly pledged to me. The one you had given me so many times before. The one you would continue to give me until I drew my last breath. The one you have given me in a hundred thousand lives. You could have spared us this. You could have spared us all of this."

"I didn't want this," Elsa sobbed. "I never wanted _this_ , Hikari. I wanted for all of the suffering to stop. I wanted to be a martyr, to be washed of my sins in redemption. Why, why did you rob that from me? Why did you steal away everything that could have made me good? Why did you drag me down to hell?"

Hikari's lips were sealed by – perhaps – a curse haunting her bones long before any witch ever tempted her. Her tears freezing along her lover's fingertips.

Sobbing continued for quite a while, echoing in the empty plains. Time frozen, two people as ice like statues encased in grief.

Eternity passed then expanded. Elsa broke her fingers free of the ice and Hikari's face. She stepped away, three times, and the chain's sway reminded her of its existence. She did not step further. When the bond was taut, she could not ignore its presence.

Hikari stood stalwart with icy death hovering at the limits of her mind. She remembered hearing _I have everyone I need_. Times where her life (her death) had meaning.

Elsa remembered saying it. The words left a bitter taste on her tongue.

Cherry walked in on the scene and stumbled on an obstacle that wasn't there. As if it still mattered, Hikari wiped her tears into the memory of her sacrifice. It played, real and sharp and painful, behind her eyes. Somewhere inside her skull, closer to her psyche than it had been when she'd been there to face its consequences.

Elsa bit down on her lip and drew blood. Her cheeks lined with despair where the ice left noticeable creases on her skin.

Cherry sat in between them and the chain pulled at the queen's spine.

Elsa knew all of the words in the universe couldn't give her redemption. Nothing could heal the wounds she had caused, and her cowardice had haunted everything until everything died. Yet, her voice and her form broken, she couldn't help but speak.

"I'm sorry, Cherry."

"It's a bit too late for me to care."

She shrugged, and Elsa bent slightly.

"I've lived a hundred thousand lives," Cherry continued. "Some of them happy."

She glanced at Hikari.

"Some of them not. Long and miserable, happy but cut short, long and happy, miserable but cut short. I've loved and I've lost and I've lived and died and lived and died and lived and died."

A pause.

"It doesn't matter anymore. There's nothing left."

Elsa knew that. But perhaps she'd hoped that nothing could buy back the shattered pieces she'd left behind. Wasn't purgatory meant for lost souls to find salvation?

Eternity would not be enough. The realization trembled along Elsa's spine, rattled the chain against her bones.

"No heaven, no hell," Hikari croaked. "Just this."

"There's a part of me that's just glad it's over," Cherry said.

"What happened? When Ursula..." Elsa trailed off.

She held her breath, because she knew she shouldn't have spoken the words.

"I don't remember."

Was it a lie? Perhaps. Did it matter? Elsa looked over to Hikari just as Cherry did.

"I want to say that I understand, Hikari. I made a deal with Ursula, same as you. But I've died one too many times because of you to be able to honestly say that I get it."

The captain stared, unwavering still.

"There's a part of me that wants to understand, so tell me: why? Why did you do it?"

Somehow, frost crept forward over the snow.

Hikari swallowed something, the taste of blood or a lump in her throat.

"Same as you," she choked out.

"Same as me?"

She glanced at Elsa.

"It doesn't matter. You'll fade, and we'll be left alone. I don't care for your forgiveness."

Elsa knew that Hikari didn't deserve remorse.

"Oh."

A blink, and the chain swayed between them again. Hikari grabbed at it, dug her fingers into her chest, pulled at her core – the gesture looked less like she was trying to pull it out, and more like she was making sure it was still there.

The disappearance opened a rift in Elsa's chest that, for a moment, devoured everything that existed around it.

"Thirteen and Leviro are left," Hikari said.

Elsa had lost the strength to despair. Nothingness had made its way again between her shoulder blades, drying her tears and devouring her heart.

"Let them come," she answered.

With the grace of those for whom it is all that remains, the queen folded her legs and sat.

Hikari stood, her shoulders crooked but her spine unbent under all the sins in the universe. Quietly, two chains had made their way to her throat and now tracked along her flesh with an unpleasant noise.

Eternity passed then expanded. Footsteps crunched on the snow and revealed the spymaster.

"So! We meet again."

Silence welcomed him. Elsa didn't lift her head.

"I drift to you one last time."

Death and a hundred thousand of it had seemingly not extinguished his love for theatrics, yet Elsa stared still at the whiteness under her feet. She heard Hikari's voice.

"So you all know? About the deal?"

"Of course. It's like a chain that binds us all to you."

Elsa lifted her face to watch Hikari cringe.

"I don't blame you, you know," Leviro said. "We've all had to do some horrible things. You didn't want to lose your queen. But it was quite naive of you to expect no consequences."

"It doesn't matter. It's too late, now."

Leviro nodded.

"Too late indeed. After me, only Thirteen is left. What will you tell him? I think he realized, before he was killed. That you'd sent them to die, I mean."

No one had needed him to specify.

"It's one thing to have something revealed to you with hundreds of thousands of lifetimes under your belt, and something else to have realized it as it happened. Weirdly, I don't think he hates you. I think out of all of us, he's the most similar to you."

Elsa expected silence out of Hikari. She watched as, a thousand times, her captain sentenced those she loved to death. A word, or an act – the reaching out of her hand or its absence, trapped in something like fate. A curse, to pay for a deal with the devil. She felt it through Hikari's memories rather than her own. _Woe to those you love_.

"I don't know," Hikari said.

"Don't know what?"

"What I'll tell him."

Leviro smirked.

"I thought it didn't matter?"

"I don't need your fucking sass, Leviro."

The lifelikeness of the interaction drove a pain through Elsa's being, something that hid the chain in its fold; nostalgia, regret, or the forgotten feeling of mortality. For a single second, the vast expanses of snow around them retracted to a vague impression of what, a hundred million years ago, someone had called home.

She watched the phrase nestle on Hikari's tongue, a taste she wasn't used to anymore. Or one she'd remembered too many times to count, something that had stopped feeling real when she'd first opened her eyes here. Or perhaps it was too real, too sharp, too clear.

Elsa realized then that she wasn't sure where her memories ended and where Hikari's started. The line was blurred.

Something sounded in her chest, the bells of their funeral. A memory of an elevator, Hikari's prosthetic, a lie and sacrifice. They'd been dead and aware before. Elsa's heart wrenched, her guts twisted around regret and remorse and despair – hopelessness and a lie, one more, camouflaged as determination.

Hikari blinked. She reached at her neck and dug her fingers in the side.

Leviro was gone.

Elsa whispered: "How many?"

Her captain, quiet.

"How many would you have killed? How many would have been too much?"

Hikari scratched at her neck. Dug her nails into it – left trails of blood that faded with a blink.

"Nothing. I would've killed them all."

"The Captain?"

"If we'd found him."

"Cherry, Krinkyl, the entire guard?"

"If they'd been alive."

"Anna?"

Silence. Frost crept forward on snow and climbed Hikari's legs.

"Yes."

Her veins exploded. _Do you know what happens to water when it freezes?_

So her blood expanded, her body contorted and gore burst forward out of her flesh. A mess of viscera – then a beat of Elsa's heart, and Hikari lay face down in the snow, intact.

Nausea pounded at her diaphragm and Elsa's ribs contracted on her lungs. She hadn't meant to do it. She didn't want to feel that again. She'd said she'd never do it again.

"I..." she trembled.

"It doesn't matter," Hikari said.

"I-I..."

Her teeth chattered, her jaw tensed, her bones fell apart.

"It doesn't matter," Hikari repeated. "Everything's gone."

"I'm – I'm still human, Hikari! I still have sins I should have absolved, I still have blood on my hands, I still know everything I should have been!"

Elsa's voice cracked.

"Death doesn't... it doesn't erase anything!"

Hikari lifted her head. Slowly, she gathered her limbs under herself and pushed to stand.

She rocked, slightly, once back on her feet. Unsteady.

"Who are you a martyr for, anymore?"

She opened her arms in demonstration.

"Everyone – everything is dead. Who do you suffer for? God? God is dead. Thirteen, the last one left? He'll fade. And then, who? Who will you be a martyr for?"

She paused to stare.

"Me?"

Guilt truly is a strange thing.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"You don't deserve it. But you're still human – and I have loved you, once. It was a mistake. I should have never given in to you. If I hadn't, everyone would still be alive."

Hikari made a face.

"You're wrong."

"What?"

She clawed at her throat again, trying to rip out her own trachea.

"You're wrong," she repeated.

Silence settled. Elsa watched Hikari try to eviscerate herself. Eternity passed then expanded.

Elsa remained statuesque so that the chain would not rattle against her spine. Hikari swayed with a wind that wasn't there.

A blink, and Hikari and Thirteen spent a while staring at each other.

"Do you hate me, Dreizehn?" she said.

"Do you care?"

Elsa felt pain like the chain pulling on her sternum trying to rip it out. Thirteen's question echoed, bounced back by walls that weren't there.

"I'd like to say that I wouldn't have made the same decision in your position, but that would be a lie," Thirteen said. "So, no. I don't hate you. I should have known – I walked into the trap with my eyes half-closed."

Hikari's hand fell away from her throat. Thirteen reached for his own.

"Grating, isn't it? But at least it's useful."

The captain blinked.

"I thought..."

"I know. You would."

He sighed.

"You're selfish, Hikari. Yet I know that everything you did, you did for Elsa. You would have died for her, if that was what was asked of you. But that wasn't the deal. What _was_ the deal?"

Hikari's lips remained sealed.

"All of us for Elsa's safety? Not quite. All of us to keep Elsa by your side for eternity? It would explain... this."

He shook his head.

"I guess it doesn't matter."

"It does," Elsa said.

She was still sat on the snow, but had leaned forward towards both of them. Now on her knees, without quite the strength to stand.

Thirteen looked down to her and empathy had pain expand inside her chest like a blizzard.

"I'm sorry. I should have known," he said.

"What, known what?"

He shook his head.

"It doesn't matter. But I hope you know that I died with you in my mind, and that it was a great comfort."

"What? Dreizehn, I -"

He was gone. Elsa kept her gaze fixated on where he had just been while her ribs peeled away and her entirety was devoured. The final flourish of her pain, her being consumed by a rift opened in her chest, so blindingly agonizing that eternity stopped right in its tracks.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Time doesn't exist. Memories a mess of images, music, silence – a storm, unstoppable and excruciating.

There is nothing left.

Elsa opened her eyes to reveal an infinite expanse of snowy plain.

She grabbed the chain at her chest with both hands and felt it freeze over. She dug her fingers into it, ripped her nails off against the sides, cut her palms open on the sharp ice. There was no strength left in these bones, and yet with every ounce of power coursing through her veins Elsa pulled on the chain.

She heard her sternum crack, her ribs bend, her soul rip and yet hold – she pulled, harder, blinding agony numbing her senses. She pulled and she pulled and she pulled and the storm expanded and sharpened.

There was give in the chain, she felt her spine contort and her ribs shatter and her sternum split so Elsa pulled at it until her all of her fingers broke and all of the flesh on her hands ripped away – she heard it crack, felt it weaken, and yet –

Silence.

Elsa blinked, and it all disappeared. Blizzard covered her senses, pushed her around - she stumbled up, to her feet, and then forward, to Hikari. She caught herself on her clothes, pulled herself up to her face while the storm sent sharp snowflakes to cut her skin.

She sobbed, incoherent, despairing, features contorted with pain.

"Kill me, Hikari. Rip the chain from my chest. You love me, right? You would do anything for me? Break this curse. Break the deal. I beg you, Hikari, kill me, erase my suffering, let me go!"

Hikari could not keep up the pretense of indifference. She sobbed, a shudder of her shoulders, and her features shifted to torment.

"I-"

"Do it! Just do it, Hikari, I beg you, I don't want this, I don't want to suffer anymore! It hurts, just make it stop, I didn't want this, I never asked for this! I know I sinned, but I don't deserve eternal torment, just end me, just end it – please, please, I beg you..."

"Elsa -"

"Don't speak!"

Elsa grabbed the chain at her chest, pulled at it, offered it out.

"Just take it, pull it out, kill me! I want to fade, I want to disappear!"

Hikari fell to her knees. The chain pulled Elsa down, besides her.

"Elsa, I can't, I -"

"You can! You can, just do it, please, please..."

They crumbled. The chain clattered, rattled, drug against their entrails. Hikari reached out to grab Elsa's face.

"I can't, I – I'm so afraid- I don't want to be alone!"

Something broke.

The storm stopped.

The air hung still.

"What?"

"Elsa, you – without you, I'm nothing. Not worth the dust I step on. I love you, I have loved you forever and I will love you forever still; I've found you in a hundred million lives, and I've fallen in love with you every single time. I love you, I love you, more than it's possible, more than God had intended, more than the universe permits. I can't -"

She choked on a sob.

"I can't – I'm sorry. I can't go without you for eternity. It'd be blinding agony, impossible suffering without an end, and I wish I was strong enough to give you that, I wish I could spare you from it but I – I just can't. I'd like to say that there isn't anything in the universe that I wouldn't give you, but I can't. I can't."

Something clicked. Suddenly, as if a light had been cast on the darkness, Elsa understood. The knowledge washed over her like a wave; the feeling that, somewhere, in the depths of the Void, there hid a woman that could protect her from anything but herself.

And, suddenly, under Elsa's tentative fingers, Hikari was human again. The queen reached out, to hold her captain's face and wipe the tears off of her cheeks.

"Oh, Hikari, I – I'm sorry. You can't... I... I should have noticed earlier. I should have stopped you, I should have... I should have hunted for Ursula myself. I should have known that she'd offered you a deal. I'm sorry..."

Hikari reached up, to hold her queen's hand against her face.

"There is... no universe where I would not have made that decision."

A pause.

"I knew that I couldn't protect you anymore, I'd already been unable to. And I regret all of the suffering that it has brought, but in a world where I can't foretell the consequences, I will never refuse Ursula's deal. Because I have to keep you safe – I can't bear to lose you. I'm sorry, Elsa. I..."

Frost formed around Hikari's fingers. Something glowed, shone around them both. It ran along their limbs, danced like a light – safety, comfort. Cold.

Hikari had not reached out for it. Elsa had offered. And now between them ran again an arcane connection, swaying and blue.

"It's okay," Elsa said. "It doesn't matter anymore."

Hikari looked down to the chain, now glimmering, that connected them at their cores.

"Will you suffer with me forever?" she asked.

Tears fell along Elsa's smile.

"You don't have to suffer anymore."

Then, Elsa blinked. The chain broke.

She looked down, to the icicle Hikari had impaled there.

"What? Hikari, I -"

"It's okay. I won't let you suffer anymore."

And, through the tears, Hikari smiled.

 

 

At that moment, eternity ended.

Memories, feelings, songs, friendships, lovers,

queens and castles and peasants and dirt,

God and the Devil and Order and Chaos

and life and death and consciousness and souls

and fire and ice and wood, iron, noise, silence, colour,

beauty, despair, nothing, everything

– it all melded and clashed, stopped, disappeared, then expanded.

Along a blank slate was laid out the foundations of the universe, again.

And in the pool of life, where everything cycles

two souls glowed blue for a moment.

 


End file.
